Choosing Wicca as my path didn’t just hand me answers. In many ways, it had me searching for them all over again. I was asking myself some big questions, and I wasn’t always able to immediately find a response. In fact, I’m still asking myself big questions. And of course, all those years ago, thinking about the events that had led me out of my former faith and onto the path toward a new spiritual practice, I started with one of the biggest ones: What happens when we die?
Figuring out how I felt about this question, the answer to it that I already felt I had, allowed me to live and breathe a belief that had remained hidden in my heart since long before I left the Catholic Church. It never quite sat well with me, the notion that after our spirits left our bodies, they were supposed to arrive before a jury of our peers or an omniscient, godly judge to have our merits weighed and counted. I never understood how anyone’s singular life could be fairly punished or rewarded. (This is the point in the discussion where my husband inevitably reminds me of Hitler and a handful of other horrible historical figures, and yes, I get it—but aside from the very obvious, how many people’s lives can really be weighed in such a way?) And after that judgment, then what? What is heaven? Hell? How could an all-merciful god who created every human possibly consign some of his own creations to eternal damnation?
I just didn’t get it. When I was small, it terrified me—which is, of course, the whole point. As I got older, I became less terrified and a lot more obstinate. The rules of heaven seemed ever changing: Do you have to accept Jesus as your savior? What about all the people who don’t believe in Jesus but are living what they believe to be good lives? Are there exceptions? How does it work? How do we know? What about purgatory, the great waiting room, from which if I just pray hard enough I can release my family and friends into the greater good—how does that work? Why can’t I pray someone out of hell?
Now, don’t get me wrong—all of these questions are answerable, at least if you have faith in the system. But I always struggled with those answers, and I now understand why:
I never truly believed in the system.
In the process of researching other belief systems, of course, I had encountered many different beliefs about death. I went back again and studied the Abrahamic viewpoints and found that they simply didn’t speak to my heart; I was intrigued by the Islamic idea that death was just a gateway to another world but got lost once I got to the details.
Old legends enthralled me: Valhalla and Folkvangr seemed filled with such honor, though I have never been much of a warrior, at least not the kind I think they were looking for. I was fascinated by the views of the Egyptians, the idea that the degree to which you were alive or dead was tied directly to the relationships you nourished with those around you. You could be physically alive, but if you were withdrawn from others you were viewed as being much closer to dead than someone who might be physically dead but fondly and actively remembered. That notion spoke to me in ways of which other philosophies had fallen short. But again, I was lost in the details.
I adore the idea of reincarnation. I’m a sucker for a second chance—or a third. Or an eighth. I want to believe that I will meet my husband and love him wholeheartedly through every coming lifetime, and if I’m given that chance, I know I will. I will seek him out with everything I have.
But in my heart, I’m just not counting on it. My truth is different: I believe this may really be it. This world, as flawed and hurtful and cruel as it can be, may be as good as it gets. (I realize that sitting on this pile of privilege allotted me by place and time and other circumstances of birth makes that idea perhaps easier to swallow for me than it might be for those who don’t share my good fortune, but all the same, it’s my truth.) When we die, I now believe, our tale simply ends. There are no more first loves, no more first steps, no more grand adventures. It doesn’t mean we end, of course. Our spirit lives on in the ways that matter most: through the memories and stories we leave behind, through the love we shared with others, through the giant gestures and grand plans we made happen, in all the small moments when we affected someone positively and never even knew. It’s the memory of us that lingers in the smell of the pie we baked every Thanksgiving. It’s the story our kids tell of that time Mommy got so upset she flushed Wylie’s churro down the toilet (a tale for another day, perhaps); it’s the song we sang as they drifted to sleep.
We stay alive in a million small ways in people’s hearts and minds, ways we are more than likely blind to day-to-day but that slowly add up to the Story—the one that echoes long after we’re gone and keeps alive who we were, the words that eventually wear down after years of reciting them, until all that remains is the feeling of what was once us, once ours.
For me, as a witch, that’s the gift, the reward, the shining castle on the hill: to live a life right now, this second, that leaves an imprint on this earth that can be cherished and held close by those I loved, so that when I am no longer physically here, someone can say, “She made a difference to me.” If over time all I leave is a faint feeling of something, please let it be of love.
I don’t need prayer to release me from all the mistakes I have made, I need no intervention to help me make it to a cloudy place filled with harp-playing cherubs. My mistakes are mine to live with and try to make up for. I walk with them every day, and every day I create my own prayer of redemption as I move through the world and try to do better. I can only hope what is left in my wake is more hope than fear, more love than hate. In the end, my children and the legacy they, in turn, leave behind will be my reward. So perhaps I do have cherubs; mine just aren’t quite as angelic as the ones on the prayer cards.
Answers that are true don’t come easily. It was a difficult transition to go from having all the answers defined for me to what seems a never-ending list of questions. I have had to make peace with the mystery of it all, to learn to enjoy the journey and keep my heart open. I have learned that sometimes I find my answers when I least expect to. I can read a library’s worth of books, and one brief passage will stand out and ring true. Sometimes it’s a bit of an overheard conversation that will send me reeling, or inspiration found in a snippet of song. Sometimes I stand in a cold, windswept Texas graveyard and suddenly know in my heart what I believe will happen when I die:
I’ll go on a road trip.
My cousin Kathy ran toward me in the parking lot, panic and bemusement chasing each other across her face.
“Find a place to park your car, for a couple days at least. You’re coming with us.”
What?
“They’re driving her to Texas.”
Driving whom? Who’s driving?
“Nana. Our parents.”
My paternal grandmother had recently died, and my aunt and father had gotten it into their heads that my grandmother should be buried next to my grandfather on his birthday—admittedly a sweet and romantic idea—and a plan had been put into motion. As far as I could see, this plan had only two flaws: my grandfather was buried two states away, and his birthday was the next day.
It had been decided that the only way to make this a reality was to take her there ourselves. I’d like to say that we were all on the same page regarding the inherent absurdity of this plan, that everyone involved understood we were boarding the crazy train. But that was ardently not the case. To my father and aunt, this seemed a completely logical turn of events.
One might ask, I daresay, how one gets a recently deceased woman across state lines to be buried beside her one true love in less than twelve hours. One might actually assume local authorities would, say, discourage a flight of fancy of this sort—and one wouldn’t be entirely wrong. However, in the hours it had taken me to drive from Kansas City back to my hometown of Salina, Kansas, on hearing the news of my grandmother’s death, papers had been filed and the back of my father’s Chevy Suburban had been carefully measured. When I arrived, they were already stamped, loaded, and ready to go. This was really happening.
And